Aldous Huxley Quotes

Books follow morals, and not morals books.

Do those people who hold up the Bible as an inspiration to moral rectitude have the slightest notion of what is actually written in it?

Language surely does affect our thoughts, rather than just labeling them for the sake of labeling them. Most obviously, language is the conduit through which people share their thoughts and intentions and thereby acquire the knowledge, customs, and values of those around them."

The arguments for purity of life fail of their due influence, not because they have been considered and confuted, but because they have been passed over without consideration.

Moral stupidity comes in two different forms: relativism and legalism. Relativism sees no principles, only people; legalism sees no people, only principles.

Education without morals is like a ship without a compass, merely wandering nowhere.

Every word which is used to express a moral or intellectual fact, if traced to its root, is found to be borrowed from some material appearance.

Even secular people can't really escape from the need to rest their ideas on some belief, some sort of commitment that is not scientific commitment.

Some people believe the alternative to bad religion is secularism, but that's wrong . . . . The answer to bad religion is better religion--prophetic rather than partisan, broad and deep instead of narrow, and based on values as opposed to ideology.

Political differences essentially depend on disagreement in moral principles.

Law is a process. If there is equality of process for everybody, then that's our definition of justice. Whether or not what is done is right or wrong, you follow the process. And so, the end result is just by definition within that alternative universe that is American law. Most people still operate within a moral universe where principles of good and bad and what is right and wrong in itself, and not just as a result of the process.

The Trouble with liberals is twofold: They have a horrible blind spot with respect to moral principles and they have an abysmal understanding of economic principles.

There is no other subject on which the average mind is so much confused as the subject of tolerance and intolerance... Tolerance applies only to persons, but never to principles. Intolerance applies only to principles, but never to persons.

People have no morals, I swear to God. The things that people do for ratings! It's unforgivable.

Justice has nothing to do with expediency. Justice has nothing to do with any temporary standard whatever. It is rooted and grounded in the fundamental instincts of humanity.

Those...who insist that there are some moral limits that they will not violate, are forever surprising themselves.

You shall not steal! You shall not kill! Such words were once called holy; before them people bowrd their knees and heads, and removed their shoes. But I ask you: where have there ever been better thieves and killers in the world than such holy words have been? Is there not in all of life itself - robbing and killing? And when such words were called holy, was not truth itself thereby - killed?

The character ethic, which I believe to be the foundation of success, teaches that there are basic principles of effective living, and that people can only experience true success and enduring happiness as they learn and integrate these principles into their basic character.

If our principles are right, why should we be cowards?

Leadership, in short, is power governed by principle, directed toward raising people to their highest levels of personal motive and social morality.

In point of morals, the average woman is, even for business, too crooked.

We get schooled by the people around us, and it stays inside us deep.

Only people who are assured of daily food can concern themselves with matters of principle and ethic. A man will become a slave rather than starve.

Highfalutin moral principles are impossible guides to foreign policy. At worst, they reflect hypocrisy; at best, extreme naivete.

If we can't get back to principles and integrity and it's reduced just the interest of calculation and Machiavellian manipulation, we are in deep trouble.